“Please,” the mother said, locking eyes with Frannie. “Please find my girls.”
Frannie couldn’t say no to this poor lady. She looked at the man in the pajamas. “You stay with her,” she ordered. “And keep pressure on the wound. Can you do that?” Frannie gave him a stern look, as if he were the kid and she was the adult.
He gulped and looked a little sick. “I’m not so good with blood.”
Frannie wanted to say she wasn’t so good with earthquakes, but they didn’t have much choice.
“There’s a suitcase in the back of my car,” he said. “In case you want to...” he trailed off and averted his eyes as Frannie stood up.
“What?” Frannie asked, then she looked down at herself as she remembered she was only in her brassiere and panties. She felt no embarrassment, not with everything that had just happened. But she found the suitcase and pulled on a man’s sweater that reached almost to her knees and a pair of slippers that were a little too tight. Then she led Connie down the slope to what was left of the campground.
Frannie waded in up to her shins. The water had risen in the short time they’d been on higher ground. She’d help Connie—because she’d promised—but as soon as she had found the little girls, she’d look for her friends and her sister.
“Jan!” Connie and Frannie both called out. “Jean!”
“My mom was here.” Connie pointed to a boulder and a mound of broken trees. Frannie skimmed the flashlight over the water and illuminated a half-submerged trailer.
“Mom!” She heard the frantic voice of a young girl, then a second voice. “Mom, are you there?”
Connie splashed waist deep into the water and Frannie followed. In the light of the flashlight beam, a wet head popped up from underwater. It was one of the twins, gasping for air. Then the identical girls were splashing through the water to Connie. They threw their armsaround their sister, hugging her like they would never let go. The first girl said through chattering teeth, “We were taking turns—”
“—diving under to find Mom,” the second twin finished.
Frannie helped Connie get the twins up the hill. Connie’s mom was right where they had left her. When she saw her three daughters, she reached out her good hand to clutch at Connie and whisper, “God has his arm around us.”
Frannie directed her flashlight at the man in the pajamas. He looked green, and the kitchen towel he held over Mrs. Wilson’s arm was soaked with blood.
God had his arm around them? How could she say that? The woman was terribly injured. People were hurt or looking for their friends and family in this horrible disaster. Calls for help echoed in the dark night and she had no idea where Claire and Jenny were, or Paul and her friends.
God didn’t have his arms around anybody here.
In fact, it looked to her like God had deserted them all.
chapter 45:RED
Red came to in front of the ranch house.
Bucky was bending over him and he could see his friend’s mouth move, but he couldn’t hear anything but the ringing in his ears. He sat up, rubbing his face to get his senses back.
“—are you okay?” Red heard his friend’s voice as if far away.
“Yeah.” He made his mouth work. He remembered the telephone. Claire and Jenny. The dam. How was he going to get word into the canyon?
Wormsbecker stood over him, looking at the ranch house. It hadn’t fared as well as Red had. The front half was gone, and fire lit the broken-out windows. “Spent a fortune getting ready for the A-bomb,” Wormsbecker complained, “and here my place gets destroyed by a quake.” He glanced over at Ernie and Sam, sitting on the top rail of the pasture fence as if they were watching a rodeo. “You two,” he snarled, “get off my fence. Start bringing horses out of the barn before the whole thing comes down.” He scowled at Endicott, who was holding Bridget’s handkerchief over his wounded arm and looking green around the gills.
Red scrambled up to standing. “Do you have a radio in the bunker?”
Wormsbecker gave him a withering look. “’Course I do, what do you take me for, some kind of idiot?” He got up and limped through the compound. Red followed on his heels with Bridget coming after.
“I’ve got everything down here.” Wormsbecker stopped at a steel door set in the ground. He pulled it up to reveal a set of stairs, then pulled a switch and lights came on. “Battery operated,” he explained. “Got a generator, too.” He leaned heavily on a steel railing as they went down the stairs.
Red had heard Wormsbecker talk about the bunker—his shelter in case of an attack by the Russians. He figured there were a lot of things to worry about in this world, but an atomic bomb dropped on western Montana didn’t top his list. At the bottom of the steps, a room about fifteen by fifteen feet was lined with shelves of canned goods, books, and labeled boxes. On the wall opposite the stairs was an Army cot and a desk.
Wormsbecker pointed to a box labeled with a red cross. “Take care of Bucky and Endicott,” he ordered Bridget. “Get out of my way,” he barked at Red, before pulling the plastic dust cover off a shiny ham radio set. He sat down heavily at the desk and put on a set of earphones. “If anybody knows anything, they’ll be relaying it here.” He jabbed at a button and twisted a couple of knobs. A meter came to life, its gauge swinging wildly.
Red watched Wormsbecker fiddle, impatience flooding through him. “Can you get ahold of the Forest Service? Or anybody in the canyon? We have to warn them about the—”
Wormsbecker held up a hand to silence him.
